Originally posted by sardion2000
Well I would think that one of the reasons why ejection seats are not used by copters that much is that most pilots do not want to get chopped up by
the rotors

They probably fixed that though by having the blades explode outwards as the seat goes up. I would not want to eject from any heli
thats for sure

as the link says, you are quite correct!

"The Ka-50 was the first helicopter fitted with an ejector seat Quick Summary:
A pilot's seat in an airplane that can be forcibly ejected in the case of an emergency; then the pilot descends by parachuteejector seat. Before the
rocket in the K-37-800 ejector seat kicks in, the rotor blades are jettisoned.
"

I have read about projects to fit helicopters and aircraft with airbags similar to that found in many cars..

This is nothing new. The US was doing experiments with helicopters in the 60's with ejection seats. When pulled to eject, the blades would blast off
from the rotar and then the seat would eject. But, designers thought it too costly to introduce and decidely that the copter had a greater chance to
land when injured than a plane traveling at mach numbers.

The helos have massive shock absorbers under the seats I think now. Correct me if im wrong here.

The main reason why ejection seats eject up is because many times there is not altitude for a downward ejection when something goes wrong. Many
military aircraft have what is called a zero-zero ejection seat. A zero-zero seat enables a pilot or crewman to eject from an aircraft that is
stationary on the ground. This can come in handy in the event of a fire on the ground. The problem with a sideways ejection is that there is no way
to support the human body against the forces necessary for an ejection.
Helicopters are unique in the fact that they can make an emergency landing with very little foreward airspeed. A small Cessna still needs a couple of
hundred feet to make an emergency landing. A helicopter only needs a small clearing in which to land. I spent a few years as a helicopter crewman in
the US Navy and walked away from a few landings where they trucked away the helicopter to the junkyard. The seats are specially engineered to allow a
person to walk away from a very hard landing. We has a catastrophic Main Gearbox failure about 150 feet off of a concrete pad. We hit HARD! My seat
collapsed downward and I ended up with my knees against my chin, but other than a few streatched muscles I was fine.
In my opinion the only thing an upward firing ejection seat in a helicopter is good for is a large economy pepperoni slicer. If you need the seat
that means that the aircraft has failed, what makes you think that the mechanism to eject the blades will work??

I read somewhere about a possible downward ejection seat for copters that someone was messing with as well... Both of these are in a way technological
dead ends as helicopters posess the capability to auto rotate to a fairly controlled landing except in catastrophic failure type situations. In those
same situations I would be extremelly disinclined to trust in the explosive bolts blowing the rotor.

They'd never give Russia any credit for being better, and they automatically call everything Russian ugly esspecially their choppers, the Apache
isn't that great looking either y'know, it's just the way attack helicopters look...

I dont think that anyone here thinks everything russia has is crap, if everything russia has is crap that why would china be buying stuff from them,
Russia can put good stuff on paper and make a half dozen of em but they dont produce enough to be of any effect, and russia sells planes to other
countries and as far as i can remember russian planes didnt hold up to well against American Airforce During NK war, or The first Gulf war, Which the
US Government says Russia helped train pilots in Iraq, and russia supplied alot of there Technology to Iraq which didnt fare to well.

it is easy to not agree with you. so maby hold the usa government ,and continue still about the aircraft? and not about so-whether it is necessary
needed ejection system, if the wholl aircraft use them ..

2. Pilot ejects and even one of the six release mechanisms (explosive bolts?) fails to fire leaving one of the six blades attached. Pilot is
chopped in half.

As skippy mentioned, don't 'copters have an inherent ability to soften their crashes by autorotation? Keeping the pilot's spine from crippling
compression upon impact with the ground seems like a better way to preserve a country's pilots than to devise an upward ejection seat IMO. Heck,
I'd prefer a giant parachute that ejects out the back and stops the whole craft than to take the risk of ejecting into the path of spinning rotors
and praying that the engineers did their job.

I could invent a sideways ejection seat that had lateral support for the pilot if only these darn gummint contracts weren't so hard to get!

I've heard about some of this. Sure it looks dangerous, but I find it's better than no ejection seat. Anyhow autorotation works, so long as the
rotor blades are intact. But if the chopper is going down, theres a good chance the rotor blades are useless.

Anyhow you guys think the Ka-50 is ugly, check out the Havoc, now thats an ugly Russian chopper. However both are very combat effective. And in my
opinion, the Havoc being the uglier one is the more combat effective one.

The B52 lower stations has Ejection Seats that fire downward. This of course was designed when the buff was primarily a high level bomber and cruised
at 70k ft. Now that they fly at tree top level it is not a very atractive egress system. I don't know about today but when I was in USAF they trained
the gus downstairs to egress out of one of the open hatches up top during bailout. We never timed how long it would take for someone fully suited with
chute to clime up that latter. I think it's a forgone conclusion that if you ride down stairs, you're toast if anything happens.

I think the ejection seat for helicopters is not practical as the others have already said. Besides you need the ejections seat mostly during the
combat and todays helicopters are designed to fly very low, so I think aoutorotate is enough.
So IMO the seat just adds useless weight. However I think the Kamov system of two counterrotating rotors is great especially for attack
helicopter(only NOTAR is better IMHO, and it is not operational yet).. I think that K-50/52 would be doing much better in Iraq than Apaches, because
they are much better armored. So not everythink Russian is crap ...

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